Three Days to Never (23 page)

Throw it away and then wash every particle of memory off your hands.

Robert Jerome had used those old hands she remembered to make a noose out of his own shirt, not very long after Charlotte had impatiently explained to him that she had never loved him, that she had only seduced him to get the papers she had stolen. He had been in jail for being an accessory to burglary, his job and pension lost, when he had killed himself.

He had also been guilty of perjury, in absolving Charlotte of all blame; through a Vespers decoy address she had eventually received a letter that he had written to her from the jail, but she had never asked anybody to read it for her.

I won't impose these memories on the redeemed Charlotte Sinclair, she thought as she began screwing the .38-caliber brush onto one of the rods. I'll save her and then just go away, with all my sins unshared.

Nymph,
she thought, reflexively misquoting Hamlet,
in your orisons be all my sins forgotten.

B
ennett and Moira had walked ahead as the four of them made their way up the steep curves of Hollyridge Drive, with Marrity and Daphne trudging along behind, all of them
crowding against a fence or garage door whenever a car slowly moved up or down the narrow lane. Marrity couldn't imagine what happened when two cars needed to pass each other.

Mockingbirds made sneering calls from the aromatic eucalyptus trees overhanging the embankment to their right, and the one resident who noticed the four of them—a blond woman who was hovering with a watering can over a row of tomato plants in red clay pots—stared at them with evident unease. Pedestrians who weren't jogging or walking dogs were apparently unusual. Marrity wasn't surprised—the noon sun was a weight on his shoulders, and this hike would have been strenuous even if he were not carrying his jacket and his briefcase and Rumbold's shoe box. Bennett was holding a paper bag that had a bottle of scotch whisky in it—he'd bought it at the Mayfair Market on Franklin, one block north of Hollywood Boulevard.

Moira had finally driven into the market parking lot about an hour after Bennett had called her. They had all got into another taxi then, while Bennett and Marrity both tried at once to explain to Moira why they were all fugitives, even she; and then, when they had driven no more than half a mile up through the narrow, twisting lanes that curled like shaded streams down the Hollywood Hills, Bennett had told the driver to stop.

Now Moira halted and kicked off her shoes, so Bennett stopped too, and they waited for Marrity and Daphne to catch up.

“So are these
spies,
Frank?” Moira asked, standing on one foot to rub the sole of the other. “Soviets, KGB?”

“I don't know,” Marrity said, pausing to switch his briefcase to his left hand and cradle his jacket and Rumbold in his right arm. “I guess if the NSA's after them, they probably are.”

“Bennett says they…
shot
at you and Daphne?”

“Shot at me, aimed a gun at me and Daph. Serious both times.” He lifted his briefcase to wipe his forehead on his shirtsleeve. “This is all true, Moira.”

“Bennett says you told him Grammar's father was Albert Einstein.” She smiled at him. “I could lose my job over this, not going back after lunch.”

Marrity was tempted to open his briefcase and show her the Einstein letters; but he still didn't trust Bennett with knowing about them. “The NSA man we met last night said her father was Einstein,” Marrity told her. “So did our father, yesterday morning.”

Beside him Daphne nodded solemnly.

Moira's smile had disappeared. “Our
father
? Who do you mean?”

Marrity looked at Bennett, who shrugged and rolled his eyes. Clearly he had not told Moira about seeing their father.

“My father. Your father. He's back. He—”

“
Our
father?” Her shoes fell out of her hands and clattered on the asphalt.

“
Yes,
Moira,” said Marrity patiently, “he came back because he heard Grammar died, and
he
wants to make a deal with these—”

“You've
talked
to him? Where is he?”

Daphne crouched to pick up Moira's shoes.

“He's with these people who are after us,” said Marrity, “who shot at me. He—”

“Where?”
She swayed on the narrow black pavement, and Marrity and Bennett each reached out to grab one of her arms. Marrity dropped his jacket.

“I don't know where he is now!” said Marrity. “He was standing on Grammar's lawn when we drove away, an hour and a half ago. We wanted him to come with us, but he waved us off, said, ‘Go!' We couldn't wait.”

“He had amnesia,” said Moira, “all these years. I'm sure of it.” Very slowly, supported by Marrity and Bennett, she sat down on the asphalt. The skirt of her brown linen suit was knee length, and she had to sit with her legs stretched out in front of her. Daphne frowned and crouched again to press her palm against the street surface, and Marrity knew she was checking to see if the tar was sticky.

“You can't just
sit
here,” said Bennett anxiously. “Get up, it's only a few steps to this key I have the, house I have the key to.”

“Come on, Moira,” said Marrity.

Daphne was crouched beside Moira, her face level with the woman's. “We should get in out of the sun,” Daphne said. “We'll all get skin cancer.”

Moira blinked at her. “Of course, dear,” she said, and let Marrity and her husband help her back onto her feet.

Daphne picked up her father's jacket and carried it and Moira's shoes the rest of the way. They were nearly at the top of the hill, where Hollyridge made a hairpin turn to the left to become Beachwood, and the street was narrow and steep between the eucalyptus trees.

Bennett waved at a shaded one-story house that was crowded up to the street pavement on their left. Red bougainvillea blossoms clustered over the door and two windows. “This is it,” he said tiredly, pulling a set of keys from the pocket of his slacks.

Entering the house was stepping out of shadow into sunlight, for the entire west side of the house was windows facing the Beachwood canyon. Frank Marrity and Daphne followed Bennett and Moira inside, blinking around at the blank white walls of the spacious interior; they had entered at street level, but stairs led down to a lower floor with a balcony outside the glass. The afternoon sunlight gleamed on polished wood floors, and Marrity noticed that the faces of his companions were underlit, as if by reflecting water. He put down his briefcase and the shoe box by the door.

“Lock it, Dad,” said Daphne.

“Right,” said Marrity, twisting the door's dead-bolt knob.

“This would have been perfect for filming,” muttered Bennett. “Camera on the balcony and on the street out front, lots of room inside for everybody's gear.”

The kitchen was on the upper, entry level, and Marrity noticed a telephone on the wall by the counter.

“The phone work?” he asked, starting toward it. His footsteps echoed in the empty house.

“It's supposed to,” said Bennett, following him as Moira and Daphne moved to the rail to look down into the broad lower level. “I think Subaru is paying the bill. Let me see your man's card.”

Marrity was already tugging his wallet from his hip pocket, and when he pulled the card out he handed it to Bennett.

Bennett looked at the phone number, which was all that was printed on one side of the card, and then at the other side, which was blank.

“Who says this guy is with the NSA?” he asked. “Besides him?” He clunked his bagged bottle down on the counter. “I should have bought plastic cups,” he said, his voice lower. “We'll have to drink from the bottle.”

“I don't really care if he's NSA or not,” said Marrity, taking the card back. He was speaking more quietly too—the echoes seemed to amplify volume. “He's against the crowd who keeps trying to shoot us, which makes him somebody I approve of.”

Daphne had joined her father by the counter. “Eugene Jackson was a nice man,” she said.

Moira turned around and leaned back against the rail, so that she was just a silhouette against the brightness behind her. “Why not just call the police, Frank?”

Marrity remembered the cartoon thing that had spoken to Daphne from the turned-off television at the hospital, late last night. The Jackson person had appeared to know how to handle it—and Marrity was certain the police would not.

And he remembered Bennett's fifty thousand dollars. Was Bennett anxious to talk to the police?

“We'll probably call the police,” he told her. “But I want to call this NSA guy first, and then you need to hear the full story.
Then,
if you like, we can call the police.”

“Can I call my office?” Moira went on. “Tell them I'll be late coming back?”

“You should have done it from a pay phone down the hill,” said Bennett. “You haven't seen these guys, Moira, they're scary.”

Moira laughed incredulously and stepped away from the
railing, into the kitchen area. “You think they've tapped the phone at the dentist's office?”

“Let's see what our NSA man says about you calling your office,” said Marrity. He laid the card down on the tile counter with a faint slap, and then took a deep breath and flexed his fingers.

They all stared at him.

“Who,” Bennett asked, squinting, “was the Greek philosopher who practiced rhetoric by putting pebbles in his mouth?”

“Demosthenes, I think,” said Marrity.

“They probably didn't have scotch, in those days.” Bennett pulled the bottle of Ballantine's out of the paper bag. “You want a mouthful before you call?”

Moira muttered, “Oh for God's sake,” but Daphne nodded at her father as solemnly as if she were advising sunscreen or seat belts.

“Good idea,” Marrity said. Bennett twisted off the cap and took a generous sip of the liquor before passing the bottle to Marrity.

Marrity took several scorching swallows, then handed it back.

Bennett nodded. “
Damn
good idea,” he said breathlessly.

“We didn't get any Cokes,” said Daphne.

“Sorry, Daph,” Marrity said, exhaling, “we'll get some later. But you can't have warm scotch right out of a bottle.”

“Nor even in a glass with ice and soda, I hope!” said Moira.

“No, no,” agreed Marrity, who in fact had been thinking that if they'd had glasses he could have given Daphne a very watered-down drink. “Here goes,” he said, picking up the telephone receiver and dialing the number.

The phone at the other end rang only once, and then a man's voice said, “Yes.”

“This is—”

“I know who it is,” interrupted the voice.

“Okay. I think we need rescue.”

“Yes you do. I gather you and your daughter weren't injured this morning? Let's not use names.”

“Okay. No, that's right, neither of us was injured. But two hours ago that crowd tried to kidnap us in front of my grandmother's house. It's the woman with the sunglasses and her friends, I mentioned her to you last night.”

“Yes, we're aware of them. Where's the last place your grandmother was standing, on Sunday, in Pasadena? As far as you know? I
don't
think she went to Newport Beach, do you?”

“No, she didn't go to Newport Beach. Who said she did? She went to the airport. We have information you need, and if you don't rescue us this crowd will find us again.”

“And kill us,” added Daphne. Marrity frowned and touched his forefinger to his lips.

“We'll pick you up immediately,” said the man on the phone, “and you'll be safe. Did you use a radio, or the telephone, at your grandmother's house, Sunday or today?”

“No.” Marrity frowned impatiently. “Yes, on Sunday, I called my sister from there. Why, was it tapped?”

“How was the connection?”

“It was a bad connection, it kept fading out, with static. We can tell you all this—”

“But where's the last place your grandmother was standing in Pasadena? To the best of your knowledge?”

Marrity reminded himself that this man was their only hope. “At the curb, waiting for the cab. Or on the porch.”

“No, I mean while she was still in the house.”

“How could I possibly—in her kitchen, I imagine, or in the shower, or in her shed. How should I know? Listen, my father is
with
these people, the people who tried to kidnap—”

“Voluntarily?”

“My father? Yes, he could have driven away with us, but he decided to stay with them. He says he's met them before, when he was thirty-five, though most of this crowd is too young for him to have met them then.”

“I daresay. Why her shed? What's in the shed?”

“Uh—lawn mowers.”

“Plural?”

Marrity was sweating. Actually there wasn't even one lawn mower in Grammar's shed; it had just seemed like a plausible answer.

The man went on: “Is there any unusual machinery in her shed? Is this the decrepit old shed in her backyard?”

“Yes, that shed.” Marrity saw Moira raise her eyebrows. “Well, she's got a VCR out there.”

“A VCR. Is there a gold-wire swastika on the floor? Maybe under the floor?”

Marrity opened his mouth, but couldn't think of an answer to give the man.

“I'll take your silence as a yes,” said the man's voice. “And I bet she was barefoot.”

Marrity remembered the tire-soled sandals he and Daphne had seen on the brick floor of the Kaleidoscope Shed. “Uh…” he began.

“Stay right where you are, I'll send somebody to pick you up. For right now just tell me your nearest big cross streets—call this number again in half an hour to give me your exact location.”